Fear and loathing of lettuce (and bad public health policy)

By Sheeva Azma

Policymakers, make sure you can actually solve a public health problem before you make it your whole identity.

I’m so tired of people who think they can do something, despite a lack of evidence, and then fail to do it.

I’m not talking about people that impulsively declare that they are going to run a marathon and then do it…but things that require actual expertise.

I’m talking about things like figuring out what produce we can and can’t eat during an outbreak of foodborne illness…like the one happening now with the cyclospora parasite (at least, it was ongoing on July 20, 2026, when I wrote this article).

Sometimes I forget that I not only have an opinion on science issues, that I actually run a whole science and policy communications and consulting company, and yes, on the cyclosporiasis outbreak, I have Opinions ™.

So let’s get into it…quickly, because I have actual stuff to do besides complain on the internet, y’know?

The cyclospora outbreak is now the largest in history, per the New York Times.

On July 19, 2026, after a string of confusing public health guidance passed down from our own federal health agencies on things like Tylenol and childhood vaccine schedules — ironically, focused on women’s health and children’s health despite being run by arrogant men (sorry, but it had to be said) who boldly declare they have all the answers without having hardly any — we got hit with even more nonsense.

Margaret Brennan recently stated on CBS’s Face the Nation that because the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, aka the CDC, has no Senate-confirmed director, it is highly vulnerable to political interference. (Actually, I did not sit down and watch a whole episode of Face the Nation. I just doom-watched their Instagram post).

The CDC is led by Jay Bhattacharya, the same guy who runs the National Institutes of Health. The larger federal department under which all these health agencies fall, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is run by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the man more famous for being anti-vax than a nepo baby (I just learned that term not too long ago).

Honestly, I did not want this lesson on how not to run a public health program from the people who swore up and down that the public health infrastructure, in COVID, was irreparably broken.

Now, it feels like it really is!

I don’t understand any of the chaotic, non-evidence-based, changing guidance coming down from any of these agencies anymore…which is ironic, in itself, since people like Bhattacharya and RFK, Jr. made their whole platform this idea that COVID guidance from the federal government was confusing, conflicting, non-evidence-based, and chaotic.

Then they took office and made things even more confusing, to the point where it no longer works.

What logical reason they had to do that — who can say?

Political interference feels like the only explanation to me since I haven’t been able to make sense of a lot of the federal health guidance coming down the pike from CDC or HHS — and I have two science degrees (neuroscience, not public health, but still).

I do not think we can trust these people to make evidence-based decisions for us…which is really sad to think about…since we, the taxpayers, actually pay their salaries to do that important task for us.

In fact, our current public health federal response is led primarily by these politico-type people, rather than actual public health officials.

In fact, many leaders at the CDC have resigned by now due to the politicization of science and public health. The presidential administration has been asking scientists to do things that are not scientific and to make declarations that don’t make scientific sense. So the scientists have refused.

There are a small number of self-sacrificing public servants of science at these federal health agencies still trying to put good information out there. To those people, I am grateful, and I am sorry that they aren’t able to do the job they spent time and money to do to protect the American people.

RFK, Jr. quietly dismantled a crucial surveillance system for cyclospora this time last year and thanks to DOGE — the government agency led by Elon Musk that was all about downsizing and simplifying bureaucracy — scores of federal scientists and public health professionals have been forced out of their jobs. It turns out that that bureaucracy actually served a purpose — which was to help us.

So, we elected a president that worked against our own best interests to undermine science and mansplain every disputable fact to no tomorrow. (Well, actually, I didn’t…but a bunch of people, inexplicably, did!)

All for the people in charge now to encounter the same issues they were complaining about — too many new developments, too much changing guidance.

On July 19, after nearly two weeks of uncertainty about cyclospora, I was shocked to read this news on the FDA website (here, to be specific — if it’s been taken down, find it on the Wayback Machine):

Ugh, changing guidance. Is this how people felt in the COVID pandemic? I wondered.

So much uncertainty remains in my mind about how we’re all going to make it through the end of these peoples’ political reign while staying healthy (and, hey — happy!).

It’s pretty tough to be healthy when the US public health infrastructure is being dismantled by people who cynically believe that it has never actually helped people. Now that it’s gone, we see that we actually did need it — which was something I actually predicted before Donald Trump even took office in his second term.

I am grateful to all the people with an actual science background or with an enthusiastic love of facts and evidence working at these health agencies. I just wish that politicians didn’t get the upper hand on this realm where scientists and public health officials are, in fact, the actual experts.